Community management is the unsexy half of social media and the half that actually retains customers. The brands that do it well have written protocols. The ones that do not, do not. Here is the minimum set every brand should have.
Response time SLAs
Set a clear internal target: DMs in under 4 hours during business hours, public comments in under 12. Publish nothing externally about it — just hold the team to it.
Tone tiers
Define three tones: default (warm, on-brand), neutral (for sensitive topics), and de-escalation (for upset customers). Give the team example replies for each. This stops new hires from inventing the brand voice on the fly.
Escalation paths
Decide in advance who gets pinged for: legal threats, press requests, refund disputes, accessibility issues, and bug reports. Put names and Slack channels next to each.
Crisis playbook
A one-pager that covers: who decides if it is a crisis, who drafts the first response, who approves, and where the public statement goes. Most crises are mid-sized issues that grew because nobody knew what to do in the first hour.
Final Thoughts
If you can hand a new community manager one document and they can run the channel without you for a day, you have real protocols. Until then, you have improvisation.